For Governmental `Cats,` Far-away Conventions The Ticket If Public Is Paying

April 13, 1988|By JAMES G. DRISCOLL, Editorial Writer

After a while, they must think the money is their own. That`s the only explanation that fits politicians and government employees who spend thousands of dollars of taxpayers` money on travel around the nation, and then scream when someone calls them on it.

All of us must go to this conference in Las Vegas, they shout, because if we don`t we will be mighty stupid. Besides -- here comes the sly wink -- don`t you people in the private sector go to lots of seminars?

Their arguments and fake outrage remind me of the story told by the fine comic actor, Dick Van Dyke, defining the difference between cats and dogs. A hungry dog spots the family dinner, unguarded, on the table, and so he jumps up and devours it. When the owner yells at the dog, Fido at least seems embarrassed and penitent, slinking away. A cat does the same dastardly deed, but when the owner yells, the cat stands his ground, then hisses in the owner`s face.

Although I like felines as well as canines, the differences in their personalities are marked. These conference-goers, these spenders of the taxpayers` money on unnecessary travel, these hissers when questioned about it, are often catlike. I`m not referring to physical grace.

Why the Palm Beach County school district sent 17 people to the national school administrators` meeting can`t be answered convincingly. Could a reason be that it was in Las Vegas? If the conference had been in, say, Gary, Ind., not many would have attended, although Gary has a new convention center that is rarely in use and the city is no longer the nation`s murder capital.

Why the school district sends 50 people, every year, to the Florida school administrators` meeting also evades a rational answer. At both meetings, couldn`t a much smaller number represent the school system, take comprehensive notes on what happened, and tell everybody about it on their return? Or they could take one of those small video cameras along and record speeches and discussions for later viewing back home. If the school district doesn`t have a video camera, perhaps one could be borrowed from Preston Henn, the impresario of the Delray Swap Shop.

Henn`s manager often shows up at Delray Beach City Commission sessions with a handheld video camera to record what happens, and she did the same thing last week at a County Commission meeting when the Swap Shop was hotly discussed. The camera may be used as much for intimidation as providing information, but that doesn`t mean school people couldn`t use it to inform the poor souls who weren`t allowed on the Las Vegas junket. It doesn`t take a degree in photography to operate those cameras.

Why did Delray Beach send seven officials to the National League of Cities Convention in December? The meeting was in, wouldn`t you know, Las Vegas but that certainly had nothing to do with it. As city commissioner Mary McCarty said, there`s a lot to be learned and a convention is ``a meeting of the minds.``

Perhaps she could borrow the Henn camera next time, since it`s right there at the City Commission meeting, and take it with her to a conference. She could make a video record of the minds as they met, and bring home the excitement for the rest of the City Hall gang.

As for the sly jab about seminars in the private sector, of course private companies send employees here and there for conferences. Tax money, however, isn`t being used. It`s private money.

Defensive politicians seem unwilling to recognize the difference between private and public money. They must either be unimaginably dense or unbelievably adept at ducking from reality.

At the risk of chasing away everyone else, let`s point out the difference: Public money is obtained mostly from taxes, which we all pay and which we can`t avoid, and therefore those who spend public money must answer to all of us.

Private money is obtained mostly from profits -- or loans and other financial maneuvers -- and it may be spent at the discretion of the people and companies who have it. They may have to answer to shareholders or loan officers, but they certainly don`t have to justify their expenses to the public at large.

Those who spend public money must do just that, and so far their justification of spending money on questionable travel has been hollow indeed.